Return to home brewing

[Alan_p]

Hello to everyone. I've returned to home brewing after a number of years and I've built myself a RIMS/BIAB system and the first brew, an American IPA has just gone into the fermenter this evening. I based my setup on the Grainfather and Brewolution Brewster systems using an old Baby Burco boiler that I rescued from being thrown in a skip. I replaced the original tap which leaked, put a coil of 10mm copper tubing in as a hop strainer, made a branching tap system to provide a drain outlet and a feed to a recirculating pump that leads to a sparring ring under the boiler lid, and insulated it all with some camping mats. It's got a boil capacity of 24 litres and I lose about 1.5 litres to the dead space and trub at the bottom of the boiler. I'm manually checking the temperatures with a meat thermometer but I plan to add on a controller based on an STC1000 at some point so I don't have to babysit the brew.

The complete system.

The hop filter

Sparging ring under the lid

Part of the plumbing of the recirculating system.

The brew session took about 5 hours including the cleanup afterwards and I've got 22 litres of what smells really good in the fermenter. I'm cooling it overnight and pitching the yeast in the morning as I had some teething troubles with the counter flow wort chiller (it leaked!) and I'm hoping it will be good for drinking at Christmas.

I've also got nearly 100 litres of Yorkshire Windfall Scrumpy fermenting too.

 

[ManseMasher]

Welcome aboard, and to a fellow after my own heart (SWMBO has started calling me Stig of the dump!)

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum Alan :

 

[MyQul]

Welcome :

 

[GlentoranMark]

I love it Alan an welcome to the forum.

How much did all this cost you an what sort of pump are you using?

I'm intrigued :)

 

[Alan_p]

Cheers folks for the welcome.

Mark(?) the pump is from Angelhomebrew and cost about £50 including power supply. It's the TS3 model on their website. I chose it because it's OK at boiling temperatures and has a run dry safety cutout. The other expenses were the 3 ball valves at £5.50 each from Screwfix, I had most of the other plumbing bits from other projects, the John Guest Speedfit stuff cost about £5 and the 10mm copper tubing was £22 for 10 metres - most of which was used in the counter flow wort chiller that still needs sorting out. The boiler was free. I reckon I spent about £110 in total including a strong muslin bag for the grain. I'd seen a Grainfather at the York Beer Festival and liked the idea but not the price. I also saw the slightly cheaper Brewolution Brewster but the price was still more than I could justify. I thought about how they both worked and after studying their instruction manuals I thought I could build something a fair bit cheaper, so I came up with this. Having done a brew with it I am satisfied that it works but I can see some improvements I can make and once I've got the chiller working without leaks I reckon it will provide me with a good supply of beer. I've created a profile in Beersmith for it which seems to be good from the way the recipe turned out - volumes, OG, colour etc. so I plan on trying a few more recipes over the next month or so. Trouble is I'm going to run into capacity problems with bottles so I'm starting to think about corny kegs and I have an old fridge that's crying out to be turned into a kegerator. Thank goodness I'm retired so I have time for this malarkey!